Kiss Someone Nice
by alice310
Summary: It's summer in the deep south. Bella's an archaeologist working on excavating a cemetery. What happens when Bella and Edward meet over a dead body?
1. Chapter 1: Hands and Feet

Summary: It's summer in the deep south. Bella's an archaeologist working on excavating a cemetery. What happens when Bella and Edward meet over a dead body?

**A/N: ****Well, hello, world of fanfiction. I started writing this story for a contest, Write What You Know, but it just became massive and I didn't get round to finishing it in time for the deadline. I have sort of got a plan for things now, so watch this space!**

**Thanks a million times to my lovely, lovely beta reader, Sobriquett. She's been very patient with my rebellious punctuation and sentence structure.**

**NB: The title is shamelessly stolen from _Ghost of Corporate Future_, a song by Regina Spektor.**

**This story is AU/Human, and is rated M just in case for later chapters. And just in case it wasn't blatantly obvious, Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight, and Edward, and all that. But c'mon, who doesn't want Edward to randomly show up at their work one day?!  
**

**1. Hands and Feet**

Being outdoors was like being underwater that day. Not that there wasn't plenty of water inside the excavation itself. It had rained the previous night, and the sand sections had slumped into the long, thin backhoe trench. Slime coated the surface of the soil where standing water was absent. There was just enough clay to be a pain in the arse. And it would be, I knew it would be. At least it was Friday - I'd have the weekend to drink water and trek back and forth to the bathroom repeatedly to try and replenish myself from a week's worth of constant, intense sweating. My shoes were already wet from the dew on the grass as I walked into the lot.

My stupid skeleton was stuck in the stupid two-meter high wall of the excavation, and the lower half of the coffin extended outside the property boundary. Further, it was under a tree, and under water. Why Jenna had me digging this, I wasn't entirely sure. We'd left a buffer on the west wall when we'd had this problem before. Who knew with her? She was the most unpredictable person I'd ever worked under.

I tried not to let it bother me, but sometimes this job made me want to scream and cry and throw rocks. It was what I'd chosen; I'd voluntarily elected to become an archaeologist. I had a Masters degree. I was 30 years old, but this work made me feel like I was at least a hundred. Thankful I'd made myself a strong cup of Café Bustelo that morning, I picked my way across the slippery sand to the slumped edge of the trench and scrambled out. I retrieved the key from inside the paperwork box, and walked quickly to the gate and bent down to slide awkwardly between the panels without unlatching the chain. Everything always felt so awkward here.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a conspicuously posh car parked across from the gate, right in front of the purple house. At least they weren't parked in front of the gate. Last person that did that had been towed. The people who lived in the purple house wouldn't be thrilled though. They'd sent their children out to the balcony one morning to tell us not to park in "their" spot. Whatever. I didn't see their name painted on the tarmac, but in the interest of not having a pointless argument with my supervisor I'd avoided parking there since the kids had made their appearance.

I took two long steps away from the gate in the direction of the white cargo van that held our equipment. The van made me think of bad surveillance operations, like in _Alias_ or maybe even _The Thomas Crown Affair._ Ah well, no well-dressed euro trash for me. This was real life, and very much real archaeology. I smirked slightly as I unlocked the back doors of the van, thinking of whoever had been driving that car stepping out onto a sidewalk that smelled like pee. Nice. People like that needed to be shocked once in a while.

I dug around in the back of the van, ignoring the already stagnant, oven-like air in the interior. The large root clippers, bush axe and my personal machete (which had somehow gotten packed in with the company's stuff) were dropped onto the sidewalk behind as my hands found them. I imagined everything would want sharpening, so when I saw the end of the rusty metal file in corner of the van I tossed that out onto my pile of tools as well.

When I closed the back doors of the van I took a second look at the fancy car. It turned out to be a new silver Volvo with a sunroof. Maybe this car owner was ok, I liked sunroofs. They gave you all the fun of a convertible without the heightened potential for death in the event of an accident. But who really drives brand new cars like that anyway? I was lucky my car even started half the time. Bah, why did I not get a real job, like in advertising or something, instead of chasing this stupid Lara Croft fantasy that turned out to be, at my ripe old age, kind of at the edge of what was physically possible for me?

I gathered up the awkward bundle of tools and shoved everything through the gap under the gate, then slid through myself. By the time I'd got back to my mess of roots, the rest of the crew had found other coffin stains to work on. There were fewer of us than usual, only five today, but that was fine with me. That only meant I'd have fewer interruptions during the day since I was apparently the only person able to handle the photo board or the camera. Viki was working on her own as usual, but she was perfect that way. I had no idea what her issue was with me, but hopefully it wouldn't come up today. She was always so aggressive in conversation and I knew I could be oversensitive but I didn't understand the antagonism.

There was no choice but to get on with it now. I realized I was well on my way to an unsalvageable mood as I walked through the squelching, slick sand with the tools to the edge of the trench where the root bulb of the tree jutted out from the wall. At its base I could see the dark brown outline of the coffin and the discolored fill within it. There were innumerable small roots growing within the dark stain left behind by the now decomposed coffin wood. The sand oozed water where I stood and I sank slightly into the muck. I was probably only at the femurs. There was a long way to go.

I dropped all the tools except the root clippers onto a pile of dirt from a previously excavated grave directly north of where I stood. I hacked off as much root mass as I could and then set the clippers aside, picking up the rounded shovel instead.

I hefted the shovel and brought it down diagonally into the remaining root mass. The force reverberated back into my arms, making me grimace. Stupid wet, bendy roots, I thought to myself. I turned the shovel upside down to stand on its handle, and picked up the file from the pile of tools. The damp from the mud had permeated my shoes and the muddy water was wicking into my socks now. I knew I'd have wet feet all day anyway.

"Sorry guys for the noise," I said, generally. No one looked up.

I pressed the file across the blade of the shovel and was rewarded by a horrible scraping sound and a flurry of metal shavings falling to the mud below. I repeated this with both sides of the blade. It seemed a bit better. I hefted the shovel again and this time when I jabbed at the mass of roots the shovel lodged itself in some part of it. I wasn't sure this was progress, but at least I wasn't giving myself neurological injuries from the vibrations anymore.

I continued to pick ineffectually at the cluster of roots underneath the tree with various tools from my pile. I knew where the head of the coffin was, and I troweled it off to confirm it was indeed in line with the others in the row. The stain was exposed just above the elevation of the water line.

My skin grew clammy with sweat as I worked and little rivers of moisture started running down my body under my clothes. They tickled. I pressed the fabric of my shirt into my chest in a half-hearted attempt to stop the distracting streams of water from coursing over my skin. I knew this tactic would only work for so long, and that eventually my clothing would be saturated. At that point I suspected I'd be tired enough from the physical effort of working that my mind would be preoccupied by keeping my body upright and similar basic motor functions.

"Is there actually a body under there?" said a melodious, unfamiliar voice from behind me. I started, and hit my head on the overhang. I swore and backed out cautiously, turning on my toes in the wet sand.

"What? Yes, of course…" I said, completing the spin on my toes and settling into a crouch. The remainder of my sharp reply froze on my lips when I saw the eyes. Deep green orbs returned my gaze steadily. I was stunned by the color of his eyes. He didn't look away as I stood up from my crouch. My awareness expanded to include the rest of his face and I realized his mouth was curling in what seemed to be a barely restrained grin. I wasn't sure if he was amused by my clumsiness, or the fact that I'd clearly been surprised to find a face like his in a mud pit like this. I collected myself with some effort and mustered a half-hearted smile.

His eyes were not the only thing about him that was stunning. His hair was coppery and, if I was honest, completely crazy. It floated around his skull like the halo on a Byzantine saint. It would only get worse out here in the humidity. He was wearing a worn grey t-shirt that proclaimed _Dartmouth_ in large, collegiate lettering. His trousers were lightweight khakis, appropriate for the weather. They, like the t-shirt, clung to his lean, well-shaped body. I noted his expensive looking hiking boots. They looked like they'd been muddied only recently. At least he wasn't one of those people who showed up in sandals.

My eyes traveled back up his body, lingering a bit too long on his chest and arms. When I reached his face again I saw I'd been less than subtle about my little survey. He was smiling at me fully now.

He started to speak when I heard a voice say "Hey!" rather loudly to the south. I stood and quickly turned toward it. So did Dartmouth. I was met by the sight of Hip, one of the few friends I had on the crew, sliding part way down the slick sand on the edge of the trench. He had the red and white stadia rod in one hand and he flailed slightly, raising his arm in an attempt to maintain his balance. Momentum forced him to take a few small steps at a run once he reached the bottom, almost crashing into the guy with the eyes. Hip turned to face us once he stopped sliding.

"Sorry," said Hip to our companion. "Jenna was talking to me about some stuff, and then I had to hold the pole for the backsight."

"No worries, I was just talking to one of your colleagues." He raised his eyebrows in my direction.

"Oh," Hip said briskly, "this is Bella." He gestured at me. "She's been a project manager here for a while."

"Hi," I said, and stepped forward, holding out my hand. "Bella, and you are?" I found myself much closer to his eyes than I'd intended to be, and I was momentarily lost in them as he took my hand firmly.

"Edward," he said softly. "Nice to meet you." I was momentarily addled, but I gripped his hand steadily in return. The way he was looking at me made me wonder if he'd been the only one getting checked out. I realized there were sand grains all over my hand, and now between our palms. I probably should have dusted my hand off before I took his.

"Sorry about the dirt, it's an occupational hazard," I said meekly as I released his hand.

"Oh, I can imagine." His voice made me think of brushed metal, cool and enveloping. I thought about what other things he might _imagine_ and I had to rein in my thoughts which threatened to spiral into distinctly non-work related territory. I stepped back slightly, wanting to regain at least the semblance of professionalism. On the other hand, how professional could you really be when you were standing in a pit of mud and sweating buckets?

"I see you came prepared." I indicated his recently muddied footwear.

"Yes, Hip warned me what it was like out here."

"Ah, yeah," Hip jumped back into the conversation. "Remember Bella, I told you my buddy from high school was visiting this weekend."

I did recall Hip mentioning something about a friend from up north coming to town. He'd failed to mention that said friend belonged at the top of the _50 Most Beautiful People _list.

"Oh right. That's cool that you guys have kept in touch," I said to Edward, trying to embellish the small talk. I hoped he would take the bait and tell me more about himself.

Hip answered instead, "We usually hang out when I'm home for holidays."

I noticed Edward's body was angled towards me.

"Edward's actually the source of my code name," Hip grinned and lifted his fingers to make air quotes.

"Ah, yes. Guilty. You dirty hippie." Edward smiled too, but kept looking at me as he spoke to Hip. I was starting to wonder if I had mud on my face.

"Sorry man, I still think you could have done better," I said to Edward.

"You clearly didn't know him when he had dreads," he replied.

"That's true." I shifted my weight to my other leg and the clammy squelch of the mud brought me back to the fact that I was at work. Horribly and inescapably at work, in a mud hole no less, with a guy standing in front of me who looked like a GQ cover model.

Edward seemed very aware of me for some reason, and the only reasons I could imagine were that he found me bizarre or that he fancied me. The latter seemed as likely as, well, Brad leaving Angelina to run away with me. So I was bizarre and awkward. That wasn't new.

"Well, I should get on with this bastard before I get told off," I added quickly and waved an arm in the direction of the root-y coffin stain. I wondered where Jenna was lurking.

"Yeah, ok," said Hip, hefting the stadia rod. "I guess your body's not ready to be shot in yet." I shook my head.

"Not even close, I'm just at the femurs." I couldn't keep the frustration out of my voice.

"Alright, well, Jenna's waiting so I have to help her shoot in those points from yesterday." Hip looked towards Edward, "Then I'll show you what everyone's working on."

"We could start here," he said in that soft, brushed metal voice again. I smiled internally at his interest. Maybe the hypothetical mud on my face made me look cuter.

"Well, if you look here," I pointed to the barely visible brown line at my feet, "you can see the bottom of a hexagonal coffin stain." Edward nodded. "This is where the head will be, and the person's feet are, wonderfully, underneath this tree and all its roots, and also probably underwater." I rolled my eyes slightly. "The other guys have better examples of coffin stain. If the tree wasn't here this one would look exactly like the others."

I paused, thinking again that I needed to get on with this or I'd never get it done in a day.

"So, this isn't a particularly intact example of what we've been getting out here. It's pretty much crap, actually. Sorry…" I trailed off.

"Don't worry," said Edward, "I won't hold you personally responsible, this time." His eyes were twinkling.

I glanced around at the rest of the crew. "Viki's looks pretty good," I pointed to the tall blonde girl. Hip and Edward turned around to face where I was pointing. Viki's skeleton was not inundated with water, and it didn't have a tree in it. The perfect, hexagonal coffin stain was fully visible. She already had the long bones of her skeleton exposed and was working on the pelvis.

Hip nodded and both he and Edward walked through the wet excavation and over to Viki. I felt both relieved and disappointed that my distractions were gone, or rather, my singular distraction. I opened my right hand and let the trowel drop into the sand, and leaned over to pick up my rounded shovel. I hacked at the wet roots and sand muck for what felt like an age, but finally I started breaking through. I decided to simply undercut the tree, rather than remove the entire dirt overburden and root mass. The roots conveniently held the spit of dirt above the coffin in place.

Hip and Edward remained in the periphery of my awareness as they traversed the open excavation, speaking to Viki, Jenna, and the rest of the crew. I did my best to not think about Edward, but my best wasn't very good. I suspected he'd work with Viki or Hip for the rest of the day, and I'd probably listen but not contribute to whatever conversation they had. Maybe I would get my iPod so I wouldn't have to listen to Viki try and flirt with Edward.

After what seemed like hours of stabbing at the roots, I finally found the eastern extreme of the coffin. Impossibly, it was a distinct dark line in spite of the disturbance from the roots. I stood up for a moment, breathing hard and propping my arm up on the shovel that I'd stuck into the wet ground for support. The digging combined with the increasing heat of the day and unrelenting humidity had left me with a soaking wet shirt. This was an unfortunate and sadly unavoidable situation, given the level of physical activity I had to do and the soaring temperature and humidity. I knew it was pointless to try and wipe the sweat from my face, but I couldn't stand the tickling of the little streams of sweat traveling down my body. I pressed my shirt into my torso to absorb the moisture and stop the distracting sensation.

I took a deep breath in and heaved my balance off of the shovel. I pulled it out of the ground and tossed it onto the pile of tools to exchange it for my trowel. I had just knelt with my shins halfway in a puddle to start more detailed exposure of the skeleton when I heard quiet squelching to my left. I looked sideways to see Edward's boots next to me. I followed his body upwards to his face.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hi," I replied, and waited. His eyes were like emeralds, so clear and clean.

"So, can I give you a hand over here?" he asked, gazing down at the very poor example of a coffin stain in front of us. I had no idea why he'd want to look at this disaster when he could work on much nicer example, probably even with some intact remains, over by Viki. This skeleton was turning out to be fairly awful; there was no reason on earth for someone to subject themselves to working on it unless they were forced to.

"Sure, if you don't mind getting really, really muddy and nasty."

He smiled. "Isn't that what this is all about?"

I laughed at that. "Yeah, that's what it's really like, but not many people make the leap from paintbrushes to getting covered in mud in extremely physically challenging environments." Something occurred to me. "Oh, I see why you're over here." I glanced up at the tree. "For the shade?" The leaves far above us were casting mottled shadows over the soggy surface of the excavation.

"Maybe." A little grin lit his face momentarily. "So what can I do?" I stepped across the coffin stain to the pile of tools and picked up some of the smaller ones.

"Well, the overburden is gone for the most part. You can see the outline of the coffin here." I leaned in and brushed my finger over the dark line. "So now we have to find out where the actual bones are within the outline of the coffin. A shovel's too big for that so we use these instead." I pulled a large popsicle stick, a thin bamboo skewer, and a metal leaf trowel from my pile of tools and held them out to him with my free hand.

"If you want to jump in on that side," I said, gesturing to the north side of the east-west oriented coffin. "It's a little bit higher up so it won't be quite so muddy for you."

He shrugged. "Wherever you like's fine, but thanks." Wherever I liked. Hmm. I dropped my own tools to the ground and knelt in the damp mud again, internally groaning at the knowledge that my lower extremities would be soaked for the rest of the day. This brought my focus back to the excavation and I tried to quell the not-safe-for-work commentary that seemed to be running rampant in my head again. I tried not to think in excessively explicit detail about how he'd watched me earlier. Of course, I failed completely.

The minute I thought about the way he looked at me I knew exactly why I was so particularly uncomfortable with it, with what I imagined in his look. I couldn't take it back either now that I'd articulated it to myself, however briefly. I fancied him, liked him, wanted him - whatever you call it. No, no, no. What a disaster. This was so not the time. I was immersed in this eternally uncomfortable situation called my job that made me feel deeply incompetent. I had no confidence here, and I didn't want anyone whose opinion I cared about to see me in this environment. Never mind that he probably had some perfect girlfriend back wherever it was that he'd come from.

Edward crouched on the opposite side of the coffin stain and put the wooden tools to the side and held my spare leaf trowel uncertainly in his right hand.

"So have you done any archaeology before this?" I blurted, trying to corral my thoughts back to the situation at hand.

"No, actually, but Hip tells me all the good stuff." Oh dear.

I started scraping at the long side of the coffin stain with the edge of the thin trowel. I was curious about what Hip would consider 'good archaeology stuff.' Edward held his trowel hesitantly as I spoke.

"By good stuff you mean what exactly?"

He laughed dryly. "Oh, you might know some of these. How about the time when someone got chased up a tree by a hog in the woods? Or when someone on the crew got bitten by a snake and didn't even notice for two days? Or the time when someone got so drunk on the plane back from the Bahamas that…"

"That was me who got bitten," I said, cutting him off.

His eyes widened. "Oh," he said.

"I was a bit ill for a few days, but luckily no appendages fell off or anything," I said, dropping the leaf trowel for a second to wiggle my sandy fingers in the air, showing they were all present.

I noticed he still hadn't moved his trowel to start excavating.

"Here," I said, leaning towards him. "Hold it like this, with your thumb and index finger over the top of the blade." I held the trowel and lifted my hand so he could see the placement of my fingers. He didn't look too sure, so I reached over and moved his fingers around. I felt the wet sand tumbling between my skin and his. He seemed surprised I'd touched him, but he let me adjust his grip on the trowel. "There," I said when I'd arranged his hand the way I wanted. "Now you scrape backwards with the blade at an angle to the surface, shaving off a little bit as you go."

"Umm, thanks," he said quietly, and a bit too intensely I thought. "This dirt is kind of like brown sugar." He was right, actually.

"Yeah, it's even sticky like sugar, because there's just a tiny bit of clay in it too," I said, smiling at him.

I stopped excavating with the trowel once we'd found a long bone, a femur. The bone was spongy from the ground water, and I'd sliced through to the cortex of the femur without intending to. It was normal with soil this wet, I explained when Edward asked why the bone looked like it had an outline.

We worked together for the rest of the morning, and it passed far too quickly in spite of the soaring temperature and humidity. The ambient snippiness and aggression usually present during work had been dispelled by the presence of an outsider it seemed. Everyone was acting a little bit of the part of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. It helped ground us, I thought, we were all so ornery with each other usually. It was nice to have someone keeping us on better behavior.

For his part, Edward didn't seem at all taken aback by the dirtiness or sweatiness and he asked intelligent questions about what we did as we worked. He knelt right in the mud beside me, his new boots covered with slimy sand and dirty water. In a badly lit corner of my mind I wanted to think he noticed my bare stomach when I used the bottom of my t-shirt in a futile effort mop the unrelenting streams of sweat from my face. This was work though, the place I felt least attractive of all, so I also sort of hoped my earlier interpretation of his gaze was wishful thinking. I couldn't be that person at work.

* * *

"So where would you go today, if someone gave you a week, all expenses paid?" I asked Edward suddenly. Before I'd grown up and decided that dating wasn't worth bothering with, this had been a vetting question for boys. I needed to distract myself from my ridiculous whirlwind of absurd thoughts.

"Venice," he answered immediately.

"Really?" I was surprised; surely there were more exotic, amazing places than Western Europe. His hand, holding a wooden popsicle stick now, stilled, and he looked up at me. "Why?"

"Have you been there?" he asked; once more, his voice seemed uncomfortably intense to me.

"No, but my parents went there on their honeymoon." He smiled and his eyes twinkled.

"It is the most romantic place I've ever been to."

"So you're in the mood for romance?" I shot back teasingly. He exhaled through his nose and looked down briefly before meeting my eyes.

"Sure. Aren't you?" he asked slowly and clearly. I stopped myself excavating then, to look back at him with raised eyebrows.

We were sitting in mud, covered with infinitesimally small pieces of human bone and what had been, a hundred years ago, decomposing flesh. Sweat was running into my eyes in spite of my overabundance of eyebrow hair. My soaking wet t-shirt was hanging heavily off the shelf of my breasts to eventually cling strangely to my stomach and trousers as it failed to absorb the further torrents of sweat being expelled from my body. The contrast between my surroundings and the subject of conversation seemed very well articulated at that moment. It was almost laughable.

"I mean, isn't everyone on some level?" he added after a moment. He seemed to be scrambling a little to reorient the conversation. Surely he hadn't meant it as a reference to me. A million crazy scenarios ran through my head but I tried to let them fly by without acknowledgement. I didn't want to remember what a social disaster I was in my current life. I'd been better in other places, but this place and this job made me stumble in so many ways. I didn't want to be the person I was at work for Edward. Which, I tried to not think, meant that he already mattered to me. Not good.

"Umm, I guess," I started, planning to brush the whole romance idea aside and move on.

"Where would you go?" He spoke at the same time. We laughed small laughs.

"Well?" he asked. I quickly took advantage of the chance to move the conversation away from explicit, uncomfortable talk of romance.

"Paris," I said without hesitation.

I answered his question and started working on the mushy, root-ridden skeleton again. The mud squelched under me as I shifted to fold my other leg underneath myself, sitting cross-legged rather than kneeling for now. I didn't care about the mud on the back of my thighs or in my shoes, the grit on my hands, my t-shirt that was too sweaty for any normal situation, or the fact that the tiny roots from the tree had grown clean through the long bones of this poor skeleton and that it was falling apart as we worked. I was caught up in remembering Paris.

"And?" Edward gestured at me to elaborate.

"I went once. I was meeting my parents to go to Normandy. I lived abroad, in England, for a while, so we'd agreed to meet in Paris and take the train together from there." I paused for breath. "I took the Eurostar, but I got there a day early. I was a little preoccupied with essays and had read the wrong day. I had a miniature guidebook and I looked for the cheapest hotel, which was of course miles away from Gare du Nord and as usual I had too many bags. I speak Sesame Street French only."

"Mmm." Edward nodded. He seemed more engaged, than I expected, in both the conversation and the excavation. Interesting. He'd cottoned on quickly to the idea of defining the skeleton as it lay in the ground rather than removing it, in spite of the roots. At the same time he wasn't going slowly either. It seemed like he understood the balance of time versus the respect it was necessary to have when digging up a dead person.

"I expected French people to be mean to me, since I was basically the textbook idiot American wandering around without speaking a lick of French."

I was interrupted by Edward's musical, textured laugh. I stared at him.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"You said lick." The smile had invaded his entire expression. Really? He was that juvenile?

"Is that funny because we're in the Deep South and normal people don't say lick in that context, or is it just because I said lick?" I asked, feigning irritation. He was too pretty to actually be annoyed with.

"Oh, both I think. Sorry." He only sounded a little sorry. "It's interesting that you use slang from Britain and the South."

"Hah. Not many people pick up on my accents." I was surprised. I had lived places with widely varying ways of speaking, but no one had ever brought that fact up in conversation by way of my accent.

"It is kind of a strange combination, but it's not unpleasant." He cleared his throat. "Anyways, please continue."

I huffed and did so. "Where was I? Oh, right. I talked to two or three people on my trek to find this random sketchy hotel, and they all were incredibly kind and helpful; unlike the people who worked at Gare du Nord. No one got mad that I didn't know French, and they tried to help me with my map. It was great. I was afraid people would start throwing freedom fries at me for being a stupid American or something similar." Edward smiled at that, and I continued, barely pausing for breath.

"Anyways, I had these stupid heavy bags, but I recognized that I was out of the touristy part of Paris. There were all these shops with open windows to the street selling fruit and vegetables. I could smell the strawberries from half a block away so I had to get some. They came in this paper bag, and got a little squashed but they were amazing." I felt like this was potentially too personal, but it was far too late I supposed. Still, this was not how I spoke to people at work, especially not with Viki on the crew. Hopefully she wasn't listening.

"So did you find the hotel in the end?" I looked up and found his green eyes looking back. I wasn't sure what to make of this amount of eye contact.

"Of course I did," I answered, slightly miffed that he'd wondered. "It was a lot like the one in _The Bourne Identity_ where Matt Damon cuts Franka Potente's hair. It totally had one of those timers on the hallway light that would cut out after 30 seconds, so you had to run to your room if it was at the end of the hall. That was pretty fun actually."

"Oh yeah, doesn't Bill Bryson have an anecdote about those in _Neither Here Nor There_?" Ah, he was a consumer of popular literature - excellent.

"That's such a funny book! My mom actually went to Hammerfest, but she didn't see any northern lights."

The conversation gained momentum as we told each other stories about places we'd been. It was lovely. He was lovely. I excavated on autopilot, which was fine because there was nothing I could do to make this skeleton look nice for its photograph. The roots had splintered it, and it was soggy from the water inundation.

I always did the best I could - after all, it had been a person, maybe a really great person, at one time. That always had to be tempered by the constant prodding from Jenna or people who worked indoors. They wanted this done in zero days, but I would have wanted someone to take time with me. I took my time when I could, but that wasn't often.

When we defined the hands, last before the cranium, and they were folded together across the torso.

"They look like they're resting," Edward said quietly.

"Yeah, we've had a few of them like this. It's nice that they look so peaceful. You might feel differently when you get a look at the cranium though. The mandible doesn't stay attached once the soft tissue decays, so it just falls, and it looks like they're screaming."

"Ah, that's not so nice," he agreed.

"I think it's kind of cool, actually, in a way. It's just what happens when everything relaxes. So it's more like they're taking the best nap ever."

"I like that," he said. "I guess you can't be too macabre about it if you have to do this every day."

"Yeah, you sort of make it into your own everyday. This is normal for us, to come out here and see detached mandibles and infant-sized coffins. I mean, I'm not formally trained in osteology, but I've seen enough between this and other cemetery projects that I have a sense of what's underneath skin in a way a lot of people might not. I think it's pretty cool. My friends with kids don't like it when I talk about the infant burials though, but babies died all the time back in the day."

"Hah," Edward laughed. "It's a good thing sex is fun then, for the human race, I mean."

"Yeah," I replied, and pretended to pay attention to excavating while I thought about what that particular activity might be like with him. After a minute I set my popsicle stick aside and heaved myself out of the mud. I needed some air. Nevermind that the air was so heavy with humidity that it felt like being underwater. It was better not to think about that.

"I'm going to go get the paperwork started for this guy, I'll be right back," I said as I looked down at him.

"Mmhmm," he nodded, and I walked to the edge of the trench and climbed out. I shook my head a little as I walked over to the table where the plastic file box holding the empty field forms sat baking in the sun. The morning had been really nice, much nicer than I wanted to think about. Well, it's not like I would ever see him again after today. On the other hand I did very much want to believe that I was, on some level, a cool and interesting person. Maybe that's the best I could do.

I absently pulled forms out of the folder and slid them onto a clipboard from the giant, plastic supply chest. I squinted at the white pages, and clipped a pencil onto the board as well. I knew there was only one way to find out how this would play out. I squared my shoulders and walked back towards the trench. I would try to have enough hope, or maybe it was faith in humanity, to keep speaking to him for the rest of the day.

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**A/N: Thanks so much for reading to the end! This is my first story ever, so every single review makes my day. If anyone has any questions about any of the archaeology terminology I used please let me know!**


	2. Chapter 2: Fishbowl

**A/N: Hey guys, it's been a while! So sorry for the lethargic pace at which I am updating. Massive thanks to Sobriquett for being the wonderfully encouraging beta that she is. Thank you guys for reading! See you at the bottom. x**

**Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight. No copyright infringement is intended.**

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**Chapter 2. Fishbowl**

There's a hotel in Sweden that I heard about once. It's in the middle of a lake. You get taken out by boat and left there alone overnight, and your room is essentially a fishbowl submerged under the water. The way I imagined it, the sky was grey and it was cold, and the lake water was almost glowing green with life. Green and brown fish would be swimming past. The light coming in the windows from the underwater landscape would give everything inside a slightly greenish cast, the fact that you were underwater would always be in the back of your mind, but it was also separate in a wholly tangible way.

The awareness of the vibrant green, and in my mind gelid water, would be a seamlessly inarticulate part of being in this place. The more immediate concerns like breathing, being warm, being safe, would be entirely separate and also heightened by the fact that they were happing in this thoroughly unlikely context. I'd never been anywhere like this, but the sensations I imagined I would have being in a human-sized fishbowl washed over me as I worked with Edward.

All the things that made me insecure, Viki, Jenna, even the heat and constant inappropriate sweating, seemed happily distant. I rolled with the sensation as best I could in spite of the petulant internal commentary about how ridiculous and unlikely this entire scenario actually was. I hyper-aware of a million different discordances, and it was difficult to be present rather than passive. I was sitting in mud, smearing my face with the sticky sand every time I tried to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and this was my job, my real job, that I failed at on some level, with a guy who looked like a model sitting next to me _and talking to me_.

He was just as sweaty and dirty as I was but on him it looked like a cover shoot. On me the weather and mud felt like a manifestation of despair most days, but today certainly wasn't shaping up to be like most days. By lunch, I usually started to drag, my energy level inversely proportionate to the temperature and amount of shoveling I had to do, but today all this seemed blindingly irrelevant. The ambient discomfort was background, green lake water accentuating the brightness of what was happening inside the fishbowl that Edward and I seemed to be inside.

"Bella, I need a photo," said a shrill voice to my right. It was Viki. Oh, wonderful. The fishbowl soap bubble suddenly seemed to pop and to my disappointment the world slid back into focus around me. I was back on the site; the heat, sweat, and grit on my skin became an immediate annoyance again. I leaned forward, balancing on my hands for a second, and hopped onto my toes in the mud.

"Okay!" I called back, and then to Edward, "I'll be right back, you good here?" He nodded in assent. "Actually we can set up for our photo right after I do this one, and then we can get Jess to do her osteology thing, and take it out after lunch." I paused, and then added, "We could probably pick at this thing forever, but it's never going to look like anything in the photo so we may as well just chunk it out, as Jenna says." I didn't like the expression 'chunk it out', but that's undeniably what we'd be doing with this skeleton once it was documented. Edward nodded once again, and I stalked off to retrieve the photo board for Viki.

Of course, Viki was nowhere to be found when I got all the photo equipment over to her skeleton. She'd failed to tell me her burial number and of course it hadn't been taken out in the log or written on her paperwork. Surely by now everyone knew that I couldn't take a photograph until I had the burial number. Intense annoyance and frustration twisted in my gut. I hoped this wouldn't escalate into one of the yelling matches we had on occasion. I usually cried, and it turned out that she was one of those people who got angry when people cried.

I looked around at Viki's work area. She had left her tools scattered all over the place, and I had to tidy them away so the photograph would look professional. By the time Viki finally did appear I'd gotten everything set up with the exception of the burial number. She narrowed her eyes and asked me why I hadn't taken the next number out in the log. I tensed in anticipation of an argument.

Surprisingly, it never escalated to raised voices. The conversation was limited to terse, barking comments on Viki's part, and ego deflation on my own. It just killed me, because I knew what I was doing, I was a good archaeologist, but for some reason this job, and this project in particular, had cast me as the inept, clumsy, overly emotional one. It was getting more and more difficult to believe the former, and I could tell that eventually I would believe the negativity that my job perpetually reinforced.

When we finally took the photograph, Viki complained that her arms hurt when we held the dirty bed sheet over the skeleton to shade it. I slid around on a pile of backdirt and accidentally knocked sand on top of her skeleton, and she complained about that too. I felt my mood dip towards unsalvageable as it had earlier in the day. With a hefty mental effort I reminded myself that Edward didn't seem to think I was an idiot, and had actually sought me out. I had no idea why he'd done it. Maybe it really was just that my skeleton was in the shade, but in conversation he'd been gracious and interested. I was mystified. I was also irritatingly fascinated.

My mind was off and running then, reliving the morning with Edward. I logged the new photos and collected the photo board, sheet, and camera, and climbed across the moonscape of the excavation to get back to the burial under the tree. Edward stood up when he saw me carrying the armful of photography equipment, and held out his hands to take whatever I needed him to hold.

I passed him the camera and dirty bed sheet. With my now free hands, I switched out the little plastic numbers on the pegboard for the number of our burial. We had removed over three hundred skeletons, far more than we'd anticipated finding. I retrieved my WHS trowel from a puddle and dropped it in the ground point down. I leaned the board against it and took the camera back from Edward.

"I have to take the photo from that side," I said, looking eastward towards the vertical dirt wall of the excavation trench. There was a small ledge at the top of the wall, in this small buffer between the trench and the sidewalk stood an institutional looking wire fence with some plastic fabric blocking passer-bys from gawking. I was going to have to climb up there somehow.

I continued, "we've done them all facing the same way, with the photographer standing at the skeleton's feet. I should be able to get a pretty good shot if I stand at the top of the section wall." Without looking at him, I moved to the wall and started scrambling up. It seemed like the tree roots should have consolidated the soil enough to support me, but I felt my legs buckle as a foot lost traction completely and dropped downwards.

The camera slid from my hand and swung crazily from the strap on my wrist as I tried to catch my balance on the bottom of the wire fence that bordered the lot at ground level. Dirt fell in a tiny avalanche into the excavation, some of it making a sploosh as it met the standing water. The face plant I was expecting never happened. In an attempt to catch myself I'd braced my right side into the wall and grabbed at some roots. They'd broken off, but Edward had bundled the sheet under one arm and was steadying me with both hands on my left thigh. His hands were stronger than I'd expected. In fact, he was stronger than I'd expected, period. My ass was about level with his shoulders and his arm position suggested he was supporting the majority of my weight with his triceps. It seemed that his lankiness was deceptive.

I stared down at him, not breathing. I noticed that his t-shirt clung delicately to his chest. I hadn't realized before how thin the fabric of his t-shirt was. Momentarily, I forgot about how ridiculous and clumsy I probably looked clinging to the disintegrating dirt wall, and wished that I had x-ray vision. I inhaled and his face snapped into focus. I realized he was watching me with a concerned expression. There was something else too, but I couldn't place it.

"Sorry, um, thanks," I said. I was unsure how to react to this situation. His hands seemed to grip my leg more tightly than necessary, and they felt excessively warm through the sweat-drenched fabric of my trousers. The different textures of his skin, the sand and sweat, and the fabric of my trousers were making my head swim.

We looked at each other for another indeterminately long moment before I managed to break eye contact and turn behind me towards the wire fence. My thoughts were a total tangle. No, I was definitely not thinking in words. I leaned into the wall, bracing with my right foot, and threaded my fingers through the metal links in the fence as high as I could reach and hauled myself upward with both hands. He pushed me forward lightly, giving me extra momentum. Again, I felt the grit between his hands and my trousers, the sweat and the heat, the way his fingers flattened out as he lifted me, and all the sensations made my mind swirl.

"You got it?" he asked. I shifted my grip a few links higher on the fence and the wire dug into my palms. It hurt, but I didn't care. I kicked the side of a foot into the soft face of the wall and hefted myself upward. I didn't slip this time and I made it to the small grassy ledge at the top.

"Yeah, I'm good," I replied distractedly, trying to turn back to face him while holding onto the fence for balance. I had to concentrate and this helped my focus return. I could still feel where he'd touched me. It had been a while, that was for sure. I intensely wanted to be able to pay attention to what I needed to do. A small voice in my head noted that something I definitely needed to do was snog Edward. This voice and I were not in agreement on this particular point. This was far too awkward to be happening at work, and I shook myself.

A guy like Edward must have about fifty girlfriends, and I had a policy of not fighting other girls for male attention. I didn't have the stomach for it, and I had to give the male species a little bit of credit. If they thought I was worth it, they would go for me, wouldn't they? Edward was so far out of my league it wasn't even reasonable to consider in the first place. So, in spite of the fact that it would be, oh, just amazing to snog Edward, I couldn't face that much rejection and, oh, there would be rejection.

After some scrambling, I managed to position myself so I was facing the right direction on the ledge. "Hand me a corner of the sheet," I told him. He reached up and I reached down and our gritty fingers brushed. I grabbed the sheet harder than I meant to, wobbling a little in my squat at the top of the wall.

"Careful," he said quietly. He was watching me rather intently.

"You guys got that?" came a shout from across the trench. Hip was watching us. I hoped he hadn't seen the thigh-grabbing incident.

I lifted my head to shout back. "You want to help with the sheet? I'm not going to be able to hold it and take the photo from here."

He quickly made his way across the wet excavation and took a corner of the sheet from Edward.

"I need an extra hand," I mumbled to myself as they spread the sheet out. One hand was still supporting my weight on the fence and the other held the sheet while the camera swung from my wrist. I switched the sheet to the hand on the fence. Edward and Hip stepped back to stretch the sheet so it filled in the mottled shade from the tree above, and shaded the wet skeleton under the tree. Holding the sheet and the fence in one hand I captured the camera from the string on my wrist and turned it on.

It was one of those cameras that you needed a PhD to operate. I did the best I could, knowing the guys were waiting for me, but my focus was scattered and I felt slow. I framed the photo board, skeleton, and coffin stain in the digital screen. Click. Click. And one more time without the photo board. Click. On a whim, I redirected the camera to frame Edward's face and snapped a picture. Click. He caught me, and I was rewarded with a cheeky grin that I only saw briefly before I looked away in embarrassment.

"Got it," I said, and I let go of the sheet. It sank heavily through the humid air and Hip collected it before it could land in the mud.

I let go of the fence and started to slide down the unstable dirt wall. Edward took a step towards me and held out a hand to steady me. That wasn't what happened. I hit a root that stuck out from the wall. I half-tumbled down and at the bottom found myself trapped between the dirt wall and Edward's body. The momentum of my descent forced me into his chest with a slight thump.

"Ooh!" I exclaimed, embarrassed and acutely aware of the context in which the otherwise interesting event of being pressed against Edward was occurring. Our legs were a tangle. His arms were placed on either side of me, his palms resting on the sand of the wall behind me. I brought my hands up to his ribs and pressed them flat against him, intending to push myself off him. I felt his chest expand as he inhaled. I couldn't begin to imagine what he was thinking, and I couldn't bring myself to look up to see his face.

The moment I didn't need him for balance anymore, my hands jumped away from his body like he was a burner on a stove, far too hot. Literally. This touching was incredibly confusing. I liked it but I didn't like that it was happening at work with people watching, when I was covered in dirt and really not at all myself. On top of this, there was just no way that he actually meant it.

When I had somewhat righted myself, I felt Edward take a step back, but his hands seemed to brush the sides of my throat as he stood. The sand on his hands, and the sweat, heightened the sensation on my skin and there was no way I could pretend he hadn't intentionally touched me. But I could ignore it, and I would do exactly that.

"Sorry," he said, taking another step back. I wasn't sure what specifically he was apologizing for but I wasn't about to ask.

"Oh, that's okay," I answered, a little breathless., "I'm constantly falling down when we do photos," I continued, trying to be nonchalant.

Hip jumped in at that point, and the weirdness dissipated a little. I was relieved. I'd forgotten Hip was standing there. "That's not a lie," he said, grinning widely, "You guys want to go to AC's for lunch?"

"Sure," Edward and I said at the same time.

I was ready to get away from the site, the busted up skeleton, the roots, the mud, the heat, and this awkward situation.

"We can do the paperwork and osteo stuff after lunch. I doubt Jess'll be able to get anything from it, but you never know. Anyway, AC's has great bar food," I told Edward as the three of us made our way out of the trench. Hip called out to Jenna that we were leaving, and she acknowledged it with a curt nod in our direction. I knew she thought we'd take too long. I wondered sarcastically if the world would actually end if we did.

I checked my watch as the three of us left the lot. It was five past noon. We only had thirty minutes for lunch, but Hip knew the guys in the kitchen and they usually looked after us fairly quickly. I looked around for Hip's car, but the old Nova he drove wasn't on the street.

"Where's your car?" I asked him.

"We brought mine," answered Edward. He pushed a button on his keychain and the lights on the Volvo I'd noticed earlier blinked.

"No way!" I exclaimed. "Really, this is yours?" Edward stopped in front of the passenger side door, paused minutely before pulling on the handle, and then turned around to face me as he held the door open for me.

I blinked at him. What was he doing?

"We're going to get dirt everywhere," I mumbled. Hip had already opened the back door and seated himself.

"Just get in, Bella," said Edward. I did so, shaking my head and making a face. Who held doors? No one did that, definitely not to girls covered in mud at least. Edward jogged easily around the front of the car and slid into the driver's seat. I felt like Pigpen from the Charlie Brown comics, only sweatier.

With the exception of Hip telling Edward where to turn on the narrow streets, we were silent on the drive. The air conditioning kicked in after a moment and I started to get cold since I was soaking wet with sweat. I suddenly realized I was exhausted. My body was having a hard time adjusting to the cooler environment and I fought a shiver. I guiltily felt the layer of sticky sand on my clothes and skin abrade the surfaces of the pristinely detailed interior of the Volvo. Edward hadn't seemed like the kind of inaccessible person who would have a car like this, and it confused me. He just did not seem like a person with money. I realized I hadn't actually found out much about him during an entire morning of working alongside him. I decided I would try and rectify this while we ate lunch.

Miraculously, there was a parking spot at a meter on the same block as AC's. Edward pulled in smoothly and shut off the engine. I tried to extricate myself from the car without scratching sand across the leather seats and I stood stiffly when I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Re-entering the humid air of the outdoors after the very efficient air conditioning of Edward's car made my shoulders tingle strangely. I mentally prepared for the next temperature shift as I clicked the door shut and followed Hip and Edward the few doors down to the entrance of AC's bar and grill.

This section of downtown was in the process of gentrifying, and it was an unsustainable combination of older, run down buildings slowly being either torn down or remodeled to conform to the new vision of the neighborhood. Edward and Hip were walking ahead of me, and stepped in closer to one another to let a group of people pass from the other direction. They obviously worked in an office. I followed suit and stepped to the side as well. A woman wearing a pink suit with a pencil skirt gave us a disapproving look as she hurried past, keeping as much distance as she could. A few other people in office attire swept by before we reached the door, and I felt dirtier than ever, and not in the fun way.

Hip stepped up to the shabby glass and metal door and pulled on the handle. Edward followed but caught the door and stepped to the side to let me go through ahead of him. I almost stopped in my surprise, but he raised his eyebrows and waved me past. I complied quickly, wanting to avoid further awkwardness.

The bar was dark for midday. I'd been right to prepare myself for the temperature change. A blast of cold air hit us from above when we stepped through the battered glass-paned and metal door. We crossed the dirty checkerboard floor and sat at the bar, Edward in the middle. The bartender turned when he heard the barstools slide on the floor.

"Usual?" he asked, looking at Hip, who nodded.

"Yeah, thanks."

"And for you guys?" asked the bartender.

"What do you have on draft?" Edward inquired.

The bartender ran down the list of beers, most of them dreadful mass produced domestics.

"I'll have a Sam Adams," said Edward after he thought for a moment.

"And for you?" The bartender stepped down the bar to move slightly closer to me. I looked at the guys, a little surprised at this turn of events. There had been a recent discussion at a staff meeting about how alcohol consumption was now expressly prohibited during work hours. I briefly contemplated my stance on drinking in the middle of the workday, and decided that the benefits of consuming a cold beer at this moment were substantial. I was hot, sweaty, dirty, and a little bit wound up, and a beer would likely solve at least two of those issues temporarily. The only detriment I could see was the fact that after consuming the beer I would have to go back to the field afterwards.

"Blue Moon, please," I answered.

"You guys staying for lunch?"

"Yes."

The bartender grabbed three menus and handed one to each of us, then busied himself pulling our beers. I flipped open my menu briefly, then shut it quickly, planning to order a basket of seasoned fries.

"What's good here?" asked Edward, looking at Hip.

"The burgers are good. The wings aren't bad either, they're spicy." Hip always got a burger.

"Ok, burger it is then." Edward closed his menu and pushed it forward on the bar. The bartender set Hip and Edward's pints of beer in front of them, then turned back to fill one more glass for me.

"This is probably going to be one of the best beers I've ever had," said Hip emphatically. "It's so damn hot out there today."

"No joke," I replied. "At least we had some shade for the morning; it'll be gone by the time we get back. Honestly though, I'm not sure dealing with all those roots was worth having the shade." I knew I was being more defeatist than necessary, but I couldn't seem to help it. In the back of my mind I was already preparing for the shock of walking back outside into the heat, and then the cold car, and then the site itself with the always-available option of drowning myself in my own sweat.

"Is it like this all the time here?" asked Edward. Hip and I both looked at him, sitting between us at the bar, and nodded.

"Yeah," I answered with a sigh. "It's like this from about May until November, but there are still some warm days in December."

"I surf pretty much all the year," said Hip.

"That is so crazy. I should get out of the north more often." Edward seemed wistful.

"So you still live up there?" I asked pointedly, seeing an opportunity to find out more about him. The bartender chose that moment to put my Blue Moon, complete with orange slice, down on a paper coaster in front of me.

"What can I get for you guys?" he interrupted, as my question to Edward hung in the air unanswered. Hip and Edward ordered burgers and I ordered my basket of seasoned fries. The bartender gathered the closed menus from the bar in front of us and walked back towards the kitchen.

"Is that really all you're going to eat?" asked Edward, concerned.

"Yeah, if I eat too much I'll feel sluggish, you know." I took a sip of my beer instead. I felt the icy liquid settle in my stomach and the cold radiated through me pleasantly.

"I guess that makes sense." Then he added, "I do live in the north still, by the way."

"Still in New Hampshire?" I had hoped for a more specific answer.

"Yes, for now anyways. I was at Dartmouth for Psych and then I stayed for my Masters." Finally, he was telling me something!

"That's cool, . are Are you still working on that?"

"No, I finished a while ago, but I've been working with my advisor as a research assistant for a few years."

"Not going to do the PhD thing then?"

"No, I'm going to eventually, I just really liked the project that my advisor was working on. I got to do some of the data collection which was great experience." He didn't elaborate further. What reason could Edward possibly have for being so cryptic? I took a long sip of my beer, and thought about how much Jenna and the rest of the office people would disapprove of the consumption of alcohol at lunch. My eyebrows were knitted together across my forehead when he spoke again.

"I'll explain when we have more than 20 minutes, it's a little complicated." In the back of my mind I realized this meant he had some intention, however casual, to speak to me on a future occasion. This was pleasing, but it also made a small, cordoned-off part of my consciousness slip into a panic, which I tried unsuccessfully to quash.

"I'm sure I'll be able to keep up. I took psych and soc in undergrad." I smiled in a way I hoped was encouraging.

"Your number's up," Hip told me, and I turned my head to look back at the digital number board at the back of the bar. I compared the number displayed with my receipt, and it was indeed the same. Two other numbers were also scrolling past, and I assumed these were the guys.

I checked my watch. It was quarter past twelve already. We'd have to eat fast.

I slid off my barstool, away from Edward and his irritating evasiveness, and walked to the back of the bar to get my fries. I heard Hip and Edward's footsteps behind me. My fries were waiting for me on the edge of the counter. I grabbed them and went over to the condiments to throw some salt and vinegar on them. I ate a few of the very warm fries on my way back to the bar.

"No ketchup?" asked Edward as he sat down with a very serious looking burger and fries combo.

"Nah, I don't like it." He raised his eyebrows.

"It's too sweet in America," I explained. He nodded and turned back to his burger with some determination. I checked the time again. We had 16 minutes. I picked at my fries while Hip and Edward devoured their burgers. I realized I still had a lot of beer left, so I abandoned the fries and started gulping at my Blue Moon. It was really, really good.

I paused for breath and asked, "What are you guys up to this weekend?"

"Well, he's abandoning me on Saturday night," said Edward in mock annoyance.

"Yeah, um, dude, no offense but I'll catch some hell if I don't take my girl out that night." Hip's on and off girlfriend, Alice, had just moved back to town. Apparently they were currently in an 'on' phase. I'd never met her myself, but from what Hip said about her I was pretty sure I'd like her.

"I know, I know," said Edward, sighing theatrically. "I'll just have to find someone else to entertain me since it's your _anniversary_." Clearly Edward had the same opinion I did about whatever anniversary Alice had invented.

They both turned to look at me pointedly. Edward's eyes twinkled and a wide smile lit his face. Uh-oh.

"So, Bella, would you mind looking after this joker for me on Saturday night?"

I had no idea what to say. If Hip was seriously trying to set me up with Edward, I was going to bury him in a previously excavated grave shaft when we got back to the site.

"I don't know, Hip," I said dryly. I could feel the beer starting to infiltrate my bloodstream. It made me cheekier than otherwise. "Can he make it worth my while?" I eyed Edward then. He was looking at me with a very odd expression on his face. The pitch of my voice went up, my phrases running on each other's heels. "What I mean by that is can he buy me a slice of pizza or something at least? It's also at least within the realm of possibility that I _may_ have plans that evening." The irony was increasingly ridiculous with every word. Of course I had no plans and Hip knew it.

Edward lifted his almost empty beer glass and drained it. Hip started to reply but Edward cut him off.

"Do you?" Edward punctuated his question by setting the glass back down on the soggy cardboard coaster and gazing at me evenly.

"Um. No." The truth was startled out of me. I had seen the conversation going a completely different direction. "Really, it's ok," I added pathetically. "Actually no, I do have plans." Edward's face fell slightly but he tried to subdue his reaction. "I'm working on my Cat Lady status and I'm almost to the next phase, you know. Would be a shame to start at the beginning again."

"Ah, B, don't be that way. Seriously. You just have to put yourself out there." Hip was indignant. We'd had many similar conversations and I imagined he was sick of hearing this from me.

"Put myself out there? What makes you think I'm going to be doing that after workdays like this. Jenna always talks about how she gets home and can hardly even find the energy to make dinner. I go home and drink water, and that's all I have left. I don't have the reserves to 'put myself out there'. It's not like I'm twenty-one anymore in any case." I was starting to get annoyed. I took the last gulp of my beer and set the glass down on its soaking wet coaster.

Edward looked up from his food for a second to gaze at me.

"How old are you?" he asked in that brushed metal voice. Cue a bit more annoyance. Who asked that of someone they'd just met?

"Guess," I told him. He shook his head and exhaled, his forehead creasing slightly. "No really, I promise I won't be offended." He looked at me appraisingly. I imagined he was counting the wrinkles around my eyes, gauging the infinitesimal sag of my cheeks.

"I'd say about twenty-five, just because you've done a Masters and have been working for a little while." It seemed he was no exception to the majority on this point. People consistently put me at twenty-five or even younger. "If I hadn't known that I would have guessed younger." I really didn't get it. I destroyed my skin on a regular basis. I should look fifty.

"I'm 30." I didn't see any point in lying.

"Wow," he said, his eyebrows rising. "You don't look it. I'll pick you up at seven Saturday night, by the way." Of course, I did not actually have any plans on Saturday but I wished fiercely at that moment that I did. I realized I didn't have a polite way to refuse. This was unfortunate, since my usual tactic with people I consciously fancied was to avoid them.

"Guys, we'd better go," I said. "We have five minutes to get back to the site."

"Oh, right." Hip flagged down the bartender and we settled our separate bills. I could feel the full effect of the rapidly consumed beer when we started walking towards the door. I forgot to brace myself for the heat and my throat constricted as I inhaled the heavy, wet air. My skin stayed cold in the short time it took us to walk between the bar and Edward's car. I kept my eyes down, not wanting to see the confusion we evoked in the well-dressed office people we would inevitably encounter on the sidewalk.

When we reached the car I opened my door and slid into the sandy seat before Edward could do something awkward like try to hold it open for me again. Something about this had gone too far and it almost seemed like he was making fun of me.

Edward turned the key and turned the air on full blast. Warm, moist air blew out of the vents. Even a Volvo had a tough time with the heat here. Edward pulled up the center armrest and scrabbled around for a second in the compartment, then quickly shut it and we seemed to ooze out into the flow of traffic on King Street.

I realized Edward had been messing with an iPod as piano music flowed around the interior of the car, seeming to have almost as much substance as the moisture in the air. To my surprise I recognized the piece.

"Satie?" I asked, to be sure.

"You know him?"

"I know he was an eccentric sort of guy, but no, I'm not especially familiar. The only one I know by name is Gymnopedia, and that's just because it's such a weird word. It's certainly not A Tribe Called Quest." I glanced back at Hip, who sighed loudly. He liked 80's hip-hop. So did I, sometimes. Edward smiled a tiny smile, but didn't respond otherwise. With the exception of Hip's directions to get us back through the maze of one-way streets, no one spoke again until we were at the site.

The car had cooled off quickly once we got moving, and the beer had made me feel like Friday night in the middle of the day. I wasn't free yet though. The skeleton still had to come out and I still had to retain enough coherency to communicate. It was lucky that I had no plans for the evening other than showering and crawling into bed to watch films on my laptop, because I was pretty sure I was going to be exhausted when I finally got home.

The Satie track finished as Edward parallel parked expertly across the gate from the lot. I liked piano music, but with Satie it almost felt like work. While I appreciated modernism on a lot of levels, right now I wasn't really prepared to deal with level of effort I felt it deserved. I was also not prepared for the song that came on next.

Hip rocked with laughter along with the opening guitar riff. "Are you kidding me, man?" To my surprise, when I looked back at Edward he seemed to be _blushing_. He collected himself in the time it took me to blink.

"Hey, I like Lady Gaga." I chimed in. I liked her even in spite of the song that had come up, the one about _disco sticks_.

"Thank you," said Edward. I smiled at him and winked.

"Hip, Lady Gaga may be weird, I'll give you that, but she's not status quo." I picked my handbag up off the floor of the car with one hand and pulled the door latch with the other.

"That's only if you think mainstream pop music isn't status quo." Hip's slightly petulant voice was muffled as we all climbed out of the car into the steam bath that was the outdoors.

It was extremely bright, and there was no breeze whatsoever. I hoped the afternoon would pass as quickly as the morning had, but there was a lot to get done still, and apparently Edward was going to stick around for the misery of the afternoon heat. We wouldn't have as much opportunity to chat as we'd had earlier. We had paperwork to finish, which would be fiddly as usual, made even worse by the intense weather. I could hear the rasp of broken glass and sand underneath Edward's shoes as he crossed the street behind me, and I was oddly comforted. For a moment I let myself imagine that he was working with me because he honestly liked me. It was a very short, confined, and almost terrifying moment, but a moment nonetheless.

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**A/N: Who caught the rebellious britishism that I was compelled to leave in? _Snog_! It pretty much means 'make out' but the way Brits use snog is much more what I meant. _Make out_ was too awkward and self conscious, _snog_ has always had this sense of self-assured amusement that I couldn't translate into American english. so please forgive my self absorbed use of non-American colloquialisms. If there were any other terms that didn't make sense please let me know. Reviews are better than finding buried treasure, so please leave one! xx!**


	3. Chapter 3: Imagine

**Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.**

**A/N: Hello again. Many thanks to my lovely beta, Sobriquett, for getting this back to me so quickly. Thanks also to all the great authors I have been WCing with over the last few weeks. It's been lovely to meet more people in the fandom. See you on the other side! x**

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**Chapter 3: ****Imagine**

When it's extremely cold, or when I am traveling from a cold place to a hot place, I always have a difficult time imagining what a different climate must be like. Even though I have lived in places with tundra and places with palm trees, I have never been good at retaining any tangible recollection of what it's like to be in other temperatures. This particular sweltering afternoon in coastal South Carolina was no exception. I tried to remember snow, ice, wind so cold that you gasped when you stepped outside, but all I could feel was the weight of air supersaturated with water molecules all around me as I walked to the paperwork table. Edward was following me.

"So what's next?" he asked. I pulled one of the coffins, a rectangular wooden box about half the height of a person, off the stack and dragged it to the front of the table.

"We finish documenting our guy, have Jessica look at it to get whatever metric data she can—probably nothing from the state of it – and we take it out." I pulled off a piece of neon orange flagging tape from a roll. I thanked myself for tucking a sharpie into the knot in my hair as I filled out the flag and tied it onto one of the rope coffin handles.

"Should I…?" Edward started, but I interrupted.

"Can you just grab the clipboard from inside that box there?" I inclined my head toward the grey plastic file box on the table. I wrote out the second flag and dropped it inside the coffin. I could feel myself slipping back into work mode. The buzz of the beer from lunch on top of my dehydration was making me feel strange and I was compensating by being more guarded than usual.

"This one?" He held up a clipboard with a blank summary form on top. I stood up and crossed the distance to him in one long stride. He handed me the clipboard. A shuffle through the papers on the clipboard revealed that it was ours from before. I'd written the photo numbers on one of the forms.

"Yeah," I said without looking up. "I think this is all we need. Can you take the coffin and paperwork to the trench and I'll tell Jessica we're ready for her?"

Edward lifted the coffin by the rope handle like it was nothing. Well, actually, they were just plywood. That didn't stop me from watching the muscles in his arms play beneath the skin of his arms that were shiny with sweat.

By the time I towed Jessica over to our remote corner of the trench, Edward had set the coffin on a bit of high ground, the lid perched diagonally across, and was looking down at the inundated skeleton, leaning a little to one side. It was picturesque. In any other situation I would have said he was posing, but his eyebrows were bunched together and his expression was distant until he heard us approach.

"Wow," said Jessica flatly. "This one's a mess."

"Yeah, I don't know if you'll be able to get anything from this one, but I'd rather you look than miss it, you know?" She nodded and knelt in the mud next to the skeleton's pelvis. Edward watched us and said nothing, apparently still lost in thought

Jessica picked at the sciatic notch with a balsawood popsicle stick. There were an infinite number of small roots woven into the pelvic bone, and the spongy bone matrix crumbled even more as she worked.

"Eh, yeah, I don't think I can really do anything, sex-wise, here." This elicited a chuckle from Edward. I rolled my eyes and knelt next to Jessica, who smirked but said nothing. To all appearances she was businesslike, but something about her body language set me on edge.

"The cranium is a little better," I said. "The mandible is in a couple of pieces, but it's all there. It looks pretty gracile to me, but this is my non-expert guess…" If I'd learned anything from working with osteologists, it was never, ever, ever question their opinion. Jessica was no exception to the diva osteologist stereotype, and she had no qualms about flexing her ego on a daily basis. Luckily it seemed that we'd come to some kind of understanding. I was happy there was one person on the project whose buttons I knew how to not push.

"You couldn't read the name plate?" We both glanced at the eroded metal rectangle on the skeleton's ribcage.

"Nope. It's gone, just like the skeleton. There's so much water, I'm sure it was in and out of water so much…"

Jessica nodded. "Oh well. Let me just take a look at the mandible and see if I can get anything. Were there teeth?" She moved along the side of the skeleton so she could reach the cranium, and I got out of her way by shuffling back a little, still crouched in the mud. Edward was still just watching, standing next to us, and I realized we hadn't drawn the damn skeleton yet, or taken the measurements.

"Shit," I muttered. "Jess, I forgot to measure this guy. I'm just going to put a stick in the ground, so go ahead and take the cranium out or do whatever you need to. Edward?" I sounded more annoyed than I meant to. His gaze immediately met mine, and he waited for me to continue. "Can you sketch the skeleton while I measure it?"

"Does it need to be to-scale?" I liked that he hadn't seemed overwhelmed by my request.

"No," I replied with a bit of a laugh. "It can be a stick figure, we just need to have an idea of the arm and leg position, the position of the name plate, just the basics. There's a space on the back of the second form on the clipboard."

He took a long step toward the empty coffin and reached inside for the clipboard. Jessica was working on defining the mandible and didn't seem concerned. Edward shifted the paper on the clipboard so the right page was up, and he became intensely focused as he looked at the skeleton.

I scrabbled around for the folding ruler. I opened it, thinking of the time a workmate had made a giant star out of a folding ruler. I liked thinking that hardly anyone had spent so much time with these kinds of tools that they thought to make a star out of a folding ruler. I also liked that I had a folding ruler with no imperial measurements at all. We had all joked about having no idea how many inches things were.

I pulled the sharpie out of the knot in my hair and wrote the 1-point-whatever-it-was on my trousers, then maneuvered myself through the mud between Edward and Jessica to the center of the skeleton, and held the ruler across. One more number, zero-point-something, got written on my trousers.

In my inarticulate subconscious, I wished I could remember the numbers or names or teeth or anything about these people. It could be me that was being dug up, someday. Wouldn't I want someone to remember me? Of course I would. All I could do was take care. In spite of the miraculous circumstances that had predicated the hand-excavation of these burials, you just didn't get a lot of time with each one.

All I could do was feel this profound underlying empathy for whoever it was, whatever their name was or life was like. It was all I had the capacity to give them, the care and time I could afford, in spite of roots and extreme heat and exceptionally distracting people. This was the last time they'd be where their families had left them, and that was, well, it was important. _I_ was the one who had to move them, and it was so far beyond the pettiness and small drama of the everyday.

I snaked the folding ruler closed and tossed it back towards the mess of tools set on the backdirt pile. I looked at Edward to see he was still scribbling on the clipboard.

"Can you include the…" I started to explain, but then I realized it would be easier if I could see what he'd done so far. I stood up and stepped across the skeleton, my foot sinking into the mud. I absently noticed the tepid water permeated my shoes. Everything was just sticky; it didn't really matter if my feet were wet too at this point.

"You can check off _female_," said Jessica to Edward.

"On the other side of this page," I directed as I reached him. He seemed to reawaken and realize where he was. He stiffened almost imperceptibly as I leaned over the clipboard.

He'd done a photorealistic drawing of the skeleton from where we stood, bioturbation and all. Of course I hadn't mentioned that word. I'd never felt awkward about it before—it just meant disturbance due to biological factors, flora or fauna—but of course it sounded like masturbation. How childish could I possibly be?

"Wow," I said, still looking at the drawing. Sketch didn't seem like an adequate word at this point. "That's really good."

I felt more than saw him move slightly away from me, the clipboard bobbing slightly as his weight shifted and his feet shuffled back. I was hyper aware of the steam in the air and bodies and the hiss of his inhale the second before he spoke.

"Thanks." His voice hit the humid air like a pebble in a pond, and I imagined I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. It was a little like someone, maybe a thirteen-year-old-boy at a beach picnic from some idyllic and imaginary childhood, putting an ice cube down the back of my shirt. I fought a shiver. I shouldn't be shivering in this weather. Maybe it was just the sweat streaming from my hair and down my neck.

As I looked at the paperwork, a drop of moisture hit the grainy paper and blossomed outward. I straightened quickly and leaned away.

"Ew, gross!" I raked a hand over my hair and felt sand smear through the saturated strands. The drop of sweat had definitely come from me. "Ugh, nasty! I just ruined your awesome drawing!"

"Bella, have you looked at anyone other than yourself out here? We're all sweating buckets!" Jessica interjected. I flushed, definitely no longer feeling cold.

"That's true," I conceded. I huffed slightly and straightened up. Edward was still holding the clipboard out in front of me. "So," I began, "you'll want to write _all present_ next to the diagram of the skeleton there, and then flip the page over and check off _female_." I clawed onto the routines of my work as a way out of this dungeon of social awkwardness.

I had Edward write down the numbers I'd written on my trousers in sharpie. I was sure it would wash off, but if it didn't, that didn't matter. Field clothes could never be resurrected. Maybe fieldwork was an elephant graveyard for clothes?

Jessica had started getting the cranium ready for removal. It was mostly underwater and it, like the rest of the skeleton, was riddled with tiny roots. I expected it to fall apart when we tried to lift it. Edward joined me with the coffin lid lying between us. Jessica used the coffin lids as a kind of work area sometimes, to see the excavated remains.

As expected, and in spite of the support of our six hands, the cranium collapsed when the three of us lifted it out. The roots were just too much. I was glad. It was nice to see that people really did go back to the earth eventually when they were buried. As a non-spiritual person I didn't really have much of an opinion on the whole afterlife question, but the level of natural intrusion was comforting in a strange way.

"Damn," Edward swore as the roots refused to release the occipital, which had been cupped in his hands. I smiled.

"It's ok," Jessica told him. "I'm pretty sure it's female, but I'm going to look for the third molars a little more before I give up."

"What do those tell you?"

"Adult or juvenile, in _general_. There are a lot of variables of course." Jess continued to geek out about dentition. Edward seemed interested, which irritated me. I moved away from them to start removing the hands.

"Are you guys really going to get anything from this? We need to move on." Jenna was standing behind me. She had a flat-bladed shovel in one hand.

"I'm almost done." Jessica was showing Edward the wear on the molars. His expression was arguably one of tolerance and patience but I knew that's what I was looking for. More pressing was the issue of the shovel in Jenna's hand.

"I'm going to get this arm out while those guys finish with the cranium, one second."

"You guys have been working on this one all day. It should be out by now." Her voice was almost sullen, and it seemed to get snarled in the heavy air while I considered her comment silently. No one else looked up, I assumed in order to avoid a full explosion of temper on anyone's part.

I quickly stabbed my trowel underneath the articulated left hand and pried at the dirt. It was so soupy that I could have made a drip sandcastle. Roots had grown through these bones like all the others, and they held onto the fragile phalanges like bizarre Velcro.

I started to announce that I was going as fast as I could, and was prepared to argue about the shovel but I never got that far because I saw something shiny in the mud on my trowel. When I scrabbled around in the mud, tiny fragmented bones and worm-like roots, I discovered it was a ring. It was on the ring finger. I held it up, the phalange still held inside the ring by the mud and root matrix.

"What's that?" Jenna asked sharply.

"A wedding ring?" I answered in an equally intolerant tone. I stood up and suddenly found myself surrounded by people. I held my palm open and everyone looked at the slightly macabre assortment.

The ring was flat; with maybe three inset stones, almost like a man's ring. Whoever this girl had been, I approved of her style. I could imagine wearing something like it myself, I thought wryly. I would have to be like the girl in _Sex and the City_ and register to marry myself someday.

"Photo it like that and then take the bone out and photo it again." If Jenna wanted me out of the way that was fine with me, because if I were gone I wouldn't have to kick up a fuss about the shoveling. I nodded to Jenna and turned on my heels to climb out of the trench. To my surprise, Edward followed me, jogging a little to catch up as I fled across the moonscape of sand to the comparative peace of the paperwork table.

"What was that?" he asked when he reached me. I didn't have any idea where to begin.

"Oh," I threw my hands in the air, unable to find the words. "Jenna wanted to shovel that skeleton out because it was taking too long to excavate it properly." We reached the folding table and I exhaled loudly. I squinted at Edward in the bright sunlight, and he seemed concerned.

"Doesn't it all go in the new coffin anyway?" he asked in a slightly placating tone.

"Yes, _in theory_," I answered through my teeth. "I know we miss stuff, that's part of the way archaeology works, but that's not the problem." Now that I was thinking about it, I was starting to get much more frustrated. I thumped my hand onto the surface of the table, depositing the ring and its dirty phalange on the peeling wood veneer. Damp plumes of sand spread across the white plastic as my hand retreated.

"This has happened before. Jenna just wants this finished in no time at all, when the reality is that hand excavation takes time. My personal priority is to be respectful, but I don't think that's the same for Jenna. She has to worry about the fact that the project is hugely over budget because we've recovered a lot more remains than we planned to; she has legitimate concerns that are indicative of fundamental problems in the way we are managed"

The sun was making it hard to think. I tried to collect my rant into something that would make sense to an outsider. "It's just…" I lifted my hands for emphasis. "This isn't how I was trained to do this, and it's hard to reconcile sometimes."

"This isn't how I imagined it, either," he told me quietly. "Let's take this photo." He eyed the pile of ring-and-bone on the table.

"I think I need black backing and shade." I started rummaging through the piles of equipment. Edward helped me. He held the sheet over me while I fought with the overcomplicated camera. We took one set as it was, with the phalange inside the ring, and another set of the ring on its own. By the time we'd finished he'd made me laugh enough that I had control of my temper again. I was surprised that I'd been able to let my frustration go so easily.

I was pleased by the way Edward hadn't obsessed about the ring like so many people would have. Non-professionals had this way of hyperfocusing on artifacts, and it would take a semester of explaining to tell someone why this wasn't particularly useful. He seemed to be immune to the typical sensationalism that was so rampant in the uninitiated, and (in a purely professional capacity) I absolutely loved him for it.

When we finished I put the ring in a plastic artifact bag and labeled it. The lab would record it properly later.

"What are you doing tonight?"

I looked up sharply from the artifact bag to stare at him in surprise. I didn't know what to say or why he would ask.

I shook my head slightly as I spoke. "I think my housemate is having some people round for grilling and beers but I think it's just a really chill thing…" I trailed off, unsure if he was just asking to be polite or if it was the other reason that couldn't possibly be true. He couldn't possibly be thinking like I was.

"Um, you're welcome to come over if you want to. It's just sort of a random thing." I squinted at him in the bright sun.

"I'm not sure what Hip is up to but I'd like to stop by if it works out." His eyes were clear when he spoke, sea green and cool. My awareness was tunneling in until I was only seeing his eyes in his face. I realized we were yet again standing inappropriately close and stepped away, still consumed by his sea-foam eyes. They were the same color as the water in Venetian canals, I realized.

"Uh, here," I verbally fumbled. "Hip has my number but I'll write it down for you too." I ripped a corner off a piece of paper, pulled the pencil from the knot in my hair, practically blind from the sun on the gleaming white paper, and scribbled my phone number. I straightened and handed him the scrap of paper. Our fingers brushed and it was a startling combination of softness and roughness.

"Cool. So maybe see you later tonight." He pocketed the paper with a tiny but expressive grin.

"Yeah, um, hope so," I admitted before I could stop myself.

We made our way back to the excavation trench and found Hip, Viki, Jess, and Jenna all working on our skeleton. Hip was screening the sticky wet sand, and his lower legs were soaked with mud. Between all of us, the skeleton was eventually hand excavated and the surrounding soil was screened. Hip even got Edward to screen and Edward, rather than being worried about the mud, completely ignored it and by the end of the day was covered in sweat, sticky sand, and grinning hugely as a result.

Edward and I carried the now heavy coffin out of the trench and attached the lid with the power drill. Then all the kit got packed up and the day was over in the usual uncomfortable flurry. We held the gate open for Jenna to drive the cargo van through and take the skeletons to storage. Hip and Edward watched while I struggled with the gate chain, Hip bracing one side of the gate with his foot.

The lock clicked shut tidily and I picked up my more-than-an-armful of kit to take to my car. Edward took my unopened lunch cooler and gestured for me to lead the way to my car. I was again embarrassed with this level of chivalry. We both may as well have been mud wrestling at this point, so it seemed even more absurd than it had earlier.

He followed me to my car, and I noticed the sounds of the beginning of rush hour and people arriving home in the neighborhood. I fumbled with the front door lock and reached around to unlock the back, threw everything inside and motioned for Edward to put the cooler on the back seat. After closing the door I turned and looked down at the sidewalk.

"Thanks, so, see you later maybe." I felt his hand on my upper arm briefly and I looked up.

"In all likelihood." He nodded very seriously, which made me laugh.

"Ok, cool, well, later then."

"Yeah." He smiled one of his lightning-quick, blinding half smiles, and suddenly ducked to kiss me on cheek. I was taken completely by surprise. Because I couldn't decide how to react, I didn't react at all until he'd turned on his heel to walk towards his car where Hip was waiting, watching us uncomfortably.

Before I could think I jumped into the front seat and started the engine, wanting to be out of there and back in situations I knew how to deal with. I pulled out stupidly without looking onto the one-way street. I turned the air conditioning onto maximum and shoved a lever to the right for recycled air. I reached an awkward left-hand turn onto a main road and managed to start my iPod during the pause in traffic.

I stabbed buttons until I found _shuffle songs_ and a trashy, forgettable pop song came on. It was fine. It had the right level of desperate confusion and utter simplemindedness. I felt like my thought processes were approximately at the level of an amoeba at that point. I turned the volume as high as it would go, realizing that other people could hear the music and see me car-dancing along but not caring at all. I needed the retreat. I was so happy the week was over.

I was home before I knew what had happened. The familiar traffic pattern of the drive home had been a blur, a comforting one. I knew it so well that I couldn't even explain the lane changes or timings of turns to anyone. It was a trip I knew without words by this point. It was a profound relief after the dizzying day.

I lost myself in the routine of cleaning up after work, grabbing my masses of kit from the car and dragging it into the house. Stepping into my room and immediately stripping off, sand floated around me as I undressed. I left my clothes in a dusty pile on the floor, wrapped myself in a towel and walked through the house to the shower. I shivered in the colder indoor temperature; my skin was still flushed and it struggled to adapt to the comparatively icy air.

The shower was meditative. I thought distantly about lunch, about the illicit beer, how Edward had been so unflappable about finding the ring, how curious I was about him and how little I had managed to learn. Except that I knew what his lips felt like on my skin. I knew what his hands felt like on my arm. I knew what his breath felt like on the back of my neck.

Standing under the burning, steaming shower I finally let myself bring a hand to my cheek where I could still viscerally recall the texture of his mouth-- springy, damp, silty, sticky sunscreen. I knew I'd tasted of sunscreen as well. What had it meant? I didn't think I would ever find out. I leaned my head back and opened my mouth to let the water stream in, finding it unpalatable but knowing I needed to rehydrate. I washed my hair and scrubbed my body with strawberry soap, and finally the water ran off me un-muddied.

When I finished, I walked back to my room in the same sandy towel I'd used earlier. I didn't care. I felt dry and empty, like I had no substance at all. I could be blown away. I had also been blown away by, um, _things_. Things I couldn't make the effort to articulate to myself any further.

I dropped the towel on the floor as soon as I closed my door, and collapsed into bed. It was only just five pm; I could sleep for a little while. I felt my mind blanking, but managed to reach for the bottle of water that permanently resided by my bed and drink the remaining third of the 1.5L bottle. I didn't bother replacing the lid after it was empty. I heard the resonant sound of the bottle hitting the wooden floor and unconsciousness overtook me.

Until a horrible noise jolted me awake. My phone was ringing. Or was it my alarm? They were the same sound. I dove across the room and dug in the pile of sandy field clothes for my phone. As I did I realized the sun had sunk and reddish light was flooding the room through the cracks in the blinds.

"Hello?" I spoke breathlessly into the handset.

"Bella!" It was a singsong voice I'd never heard before.

My forehead crinkled and I asked, "Who is this?"

"It's Alice!" Oh. Hip's 'Um Friend' or girlfriend or whatever she was. She sounded worryingly cheerful.

All I could manage in response was, "oh." She was unruffled.

"We heard you were grilling tonight so Hip and I are going to come by on our way back from the beach." I struggled to wake up enough to follow her quickly flowing speech. "You met Edward today, yes? He's with us too. It will be maybe an hour?" What time was it? I had no idea.

"Um, sure." I vaguely recalled mentioning this evening to someone earlier. What had I said?

"We'll bring some Magic Hat." Hip probably knew this was my favorite beer. My brain was starting to regain its connection to my body and I answered with a little more enthusiasm.

"Oh, wow, thanks."

"It'll be so great to finally meet you, Bella! Hip's told me you're the only cool person in the whole office." I doubted that, but whatever.

I laughed. "Honestly, the last thing I want to do is talk about work. My housemate is grilling; if you want to throw anything on the grill bring it along. I have no idea what we have in the house."

She laughed beautifully. It was like singing, even through the phone.

"Don't worry, we'll take care of all that! See you in an hour!" I could hear the smile in her voice.

"Alright then." She hung up, and I realized I was kneeling on the floor by my dirty field trousers, naked, in my room with a fine dust over everything and dirty underwear all over the floor. No one could see this. Innumerable expletives flooded my head, and I suddenly found myself very much awake.

I only had an hour. Edward would be here in an hour. At my house, possibly even seeing my room. I had to clean. What would I wear? My mind started to race and spin, and for the next three quarters of an hour, so did I. Digging out some normal person clothes, a cute band t-shirt that fit me properly, the cleanest, newest jeans. Oh, my hair was a disaster since I'd slept on it. I flitted frenetically around the house, my attention flowing easily from one thing to the next with hyper focus.

I'd just put the vacuum back in the corner when my phone rang again. It was Hip. He wanted to know what street to turn onto. I told him, and after I hung up I tried to breathe deeply. I'd heard Alice's odd, melodic laugh and Edward's, deeper but equally musical to me, in the background. I felt the sound from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. Oh, this evening would shock me. I was sure of it.

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**A/N: Thanks so much for reading. Please review. Also, I'd like to recommend that you check out a great one-shot by Sobriquett called The Shipwreck of Reason. Incredibly well written and has an unusual tone for twific. See you next time around! xx**


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